A drought where there is water, water everywhere

Sponsored by:

For the past few weeks, Sylvia and I have been paddling across the heath in gumboots on our walkies, and the garden is a quagmire. I am very aware of this because several times a day, when my dog wishes to go toilet, I must wrap its plaster-cast leg in plastic and wade across the ex-lawn, now a lake of mud, and day after day, the rain has been widdling down. Occasionally the sun appears and 60 frogs surface in the brimming pond. Why is the world suddenly illuminated, they wonder? It hasn't happened for months.

So this is our drought, but where has all the water gone? Easy. It has gurgled out of holes up the hill, it has rippled down the road from the station, swirling along the gutters and pouring into the basements of houses on its way. When, or if, I move to my dream flat round the corner, I shall be moving into a flash-flood plain.

Naturally we all feel rather bitter over here, because Thames Water has already dug up the road to mend the pipes. Four times. We watch them at it, we count the workers, staring at holes, perhaps wondering how to do the mending. Often they stare in groups of five or seven. I pass them on my way up the hill, I pass them on my way back one hour later, still staring; some loitering, some resting, some dreaming, none working, as all around them rivers form, rats and mice rush indoors, geysers spray the passers by, roads are closed, and inside the log-jammed cars, people are screaming, nutting their windscreens, despairing of life.

Sometimes, in our fevered brains, we imagine that the pipe-menders and mains replacers, just as they complete the mending of one pipe, secretly stab another, so that in a short while there will be another burst, another flood, another job, another contract justified, another hole to stare at. They swear they are mending leaks, but hidden deep below ground, where we can't see them.

Meanwhile, up here, above the parched aquifers and bursting pipes, I am doing my very best to save water. I never wash my dogs or car; I need not water the drenched garden. But sadly, Mavis's titchy 10ft lawn has died - her first ever lawn, in her first garden, for which she has scrimped and saved for years, but is forbidden to water. That water is needed for the golf course.

Pity Mavis doesn't live near here. She could collect water from that new river running down our road today, yesterday, and the day before. It isn't a burst pipe, it's a leaking fire hydrant. No need to worry then, is there?